Health & WellnessS


Book

How Big Pharma and the Psychiatric Establishment Drugged Up Our Kids

Martha Rosenberg
Alternet
Wed, 16 May 2012 19:00 UTC
Image
© sfari.org
The following is an excerpt from Born with a Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks, and Hacks Pimp the Public Health (Prometheus Books, 2012). Click here to order a copy of the book.

In his book Psychiatryland, psychiatrist Phillip Sinaikin recounts reading a scientific article in which it was debated whether a three-year-old girl who ran out into traffic had oppositional-defiant disorder or bipolar disorder, the latter marked by "grandiose delusions" that she was special and cars could not harm her.1

How did the once modest medical specialty of child psychiatry become the aggressive "pediatric psychopharmacology" that finds ADHD, pediatric conduct disorder, depression, bipolar disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, mood disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, mixed manias, social phobia, anxiety, sleep disorders, borderline disorders, assorted "spectrum" disorders, irritability, aggression, pervasive development disorders, personality disorders, and even schizophrenia under every rock? And how did this branch of psychiatry come to find the answer to the "psychopathologies" in the name of the discipline itself: pediatric psychopharmacology? Just good marketing. Pharma is wooing the pediatric patient because that's where the money is. Just like country and western songs about finding love where you can when there is no love to be found at home. Pharma has stopped finding "love" in the form of the new blockbuster drugs that catapulted it through the 1990s and 2000s. According to the Wall Street Journal, new drugs made Pharma only $4.3 billion in 2010 compared with $11.8 billion in 2005 - a two-thirds drop.2
Read More...
Heart

Can Pomegranate Keep You From Going Under The Knife?

Sayer Ji
GreenMedInfo
Mon, 28 May 2012 08:00 UTC
Pomegranate
© GreenMedInfo
While technically a berry, pomegranate "fruit" may be nature's answer to turning the tide against the #1 cause of death in the industrialized world: heart disease. Let's start with what it tells us simply through experiencing it....

Pomegranate has a remarkable astringency, giving your mouth and gums that dry, puckering mouthfeel. This cleansing sensation is technically caused, as with all astringents, by shrinking and disinfecting your mucous membranes.

Anyone who drinks pomegranate juice, or is lucky enough to eat one fresh, can understand why it is so effective at cleansing the circulatory system. Nature certainly planted enough poetic visual clues there for us: its juice looks like blood, and it does resemble a multi-chambered heart, at least when you consider its appearance in comparison to most other fruits.

But sometimes the obvious (in appearance and effect) is not compelling enough - certainly not for the hyper-rational, "evidence-based" folks in positions of medical and regulatory power today - so we have science to lend additional support and credibility, and perhaps even keep some of us from being fined or going to jail for stating the obvious, e.g. "This juice may be beneficial to your health."

Indeed, your mouth and your arteries are lined with the same cell type: epithelial cells. Together, they make up the epithelium, one of four basic tissue types within animals, along with connective tissue, muscle tissue and nervous tissue, and which comprises the interior walls of the entire circulatory system. So, when you feel that amazing cleansing effect in your mouth, this is in fact akin to what your circulatory system - and the epithelium/endothelium lining the inside of your veins and arteries - "feels" as well. How do we know this for sure?
Read More...
Health

Eating Aluminum: Is It As Safe As Our Regulators Say?

Sayer Ji
GreenMedInfo
Sun, 27 May 2012 13:00 UTC
Aluminium
© GreenMedInfo
Aluminum toxicity, a characteristically manmade problem, is now impossible to avoid, and has become a postmodern rite of passage. Our environment has become so polluted with the stuff, that even our crop plants are being threatened, with biotechnology firms now scrambling to genetically engineer aluminum-tolerance into them as a possible, though still desperate solution.

Not only are we being exposed, daily, through increasingly polluted water, soil and air, but many of our regulatory agencies consider it perfectly safe to intentionally consume or inject the stuff directly into our bodies.

While there is no known physiologic need or positive biological role for aluminum in the human body, the FDA is perfectly content with the population it is charged with protecting eating it as a "food grade" additive. This same "regulatory agency" promotes the mythical concept of a "safe" food grade petroleum, allowing food manufacturers to surreptitiously feed us over half a pound a year, which is likely why human autopsies have revealed that almost half of us have pathological deposits of the stuff in our livers and spleen.*

Technically, there are 8 forms of aluminum the government considers benign enough to receive GRAS, or Generally Recognized As Safe, status - a designation which basically exempts the substance from adequate safety testing. Those 8 forms are:
  • Aluminum ammonium sulfate
  • Aluminum calcium silicate
  • Aluminum hydroxide
  • Aluminum oleate
  • Aluminum palmitate
  • Aluminum potassium sulfate
  • Aluminum sodium sulfate
  • Aluminum sulfate
Read More...
Health

Gold Standard Evidence that Bacterial Overgrowth is at the Heart of IBS


Pro Health
Sat, 26 May 2012 23:40 UTC
An overgrowth of bacteria in the gut has been definitively linked to irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), according to the results of a new study at Cedars-Sinai (Los Angeles) which used cultures from the small intestine.

Image
aerobic bacteria
This is the first study to use this "gold standard" method of connecting bacteria to the cause of the disease, which affects an estimated 30 million people in the US alone. Previous studies have indicated that aerobic bacteria play a role in the disease, including breath tests detecting methane - a byproduct of bacterial fermentation in the gut. But this study was the first to make the link using bacterial cultures.

The study, published May 11 by Digestive Diseases and Sciences ("The prevalence of overgrowth by aerobic bacteria in the small intestine by small bowel culture: relationship with irritable bowel syndrome"), examined samples of patients' small bowel cultures to confirm the presence of small intestinal bacterial overgrowth - or SIBO - in more than 320 subjects.
Read More...
Attention

Parabens in Antiperspirants May Cause Breast Cancer

Dr. Mercola
Mercola.com
Sun, 27 May 2012 22:35 UTC
Image
© health-fitnesstips.blogspot.com
New research examining parabens found in cancerous human breast tissue points the finger at antiperspirants and other cosmetics for increasing your risk of breast canceri.

The research, which is also reviewed in an editorial published in the Journal of Applied Toxicology, looked at where breast tumors were appearing, and determined that higher concentrations of parabens were found in the upper quadrants of the breast and axillary area, where antiperspirants are usually appliedii.

Parabens are chemicals that serve as preservatives in antiperspirants and many cosmetics, as well as sun lotions. Previous studies have shown that all parabens have estrogenic activity in human breast cancer cells.

Another component of antiperspirants, aluminum chloride, has been found to act similarly to the way oncogenes work to provide molecular transformations in cancer cells. According to the authors of the editorial review, the research shows "signals of concern that such compounds are not as safe as previously generally considered, and further research is warranted." Furthermore:
"The data from this latest study, the most extensive examination of parabens in human breast so far published, confirms previous work and raises a number of questions on the entire parabens, personal care product and human health debate, particularly relating to the source and toxicological significance of the paraben esters."
Read More...
Red Flag

Scientists Recommend Dangerous Antipsychotic Drugs to Treat Cancer

Susanne Posel
Activist Post
Sun, 27 May 2012 22:12 UTC
Image
© qwmagazine.com
The Obama administration recently announced that the US government will assist pharmaceutical corporations in finding prescription drugs to treat new diseases.

The focus of this collaboration will identify new uses for drugs that have already been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

"We need to speed the pace at which we are turning discoveries into better health outcomes," said Dr. Francis Collins, of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). "NIH looks forward to working with our partners in industry and academia to tackle an urgent need that is beyond the scope of any one organization or sector."

Obama signed Executive Order (EO), Establishing the National Prevention, Health Promotion and Public Health Council in 2010.
Read More...
Megaphone

Big Agriculture's Big Secrets: 9 Things You Need to Know About the Food You Eat

Martha Rosenberg
Alternet
Sun, 27 May 2012 20:13 UTC
Image
© theoldspeakjournal.wordpress.com
Food scandals are so costly to Big Food that it has repeatedly tried to kill the messenger rather than clean up its act.

Thanks to factory farming's massive economies of scale, a lot of food today is disgusting or cruel or disgusting and cruel. Just when people stopped talking about cantaloupes with deadly listeria, "pink slime" hit the news. And just when people stopped talking about pink slime, ground beef treated with ammonia to kill germs, mad cow hit the news. Does anyone even remember the arsenic in the fruit juice?

Food scandals are so costly to Big Food, it has repeatedly tried to kill the messenger rather than clean up its act. In the 1990s it pushed through "food disparagement" laws under which Oprah Winfrey herself was sued by cattlemen in 1997 (Winfrey said she would never eat a hamburger again upon learning that cows were being fed to cows). Winfrey was acquitted and cow cannibalism was made illegal but the US still lost $3 billion in beef exports when a first mad cow was discovered in 2003. April's new mad cow will not help foreign trade.
Read More...
Cheeseburger

McDonald's Rejects Anti-Obesity Campaign, 'Proud' of 'Responsible' Menu

Anthony Gucciardi
NaturalSociety
Sun, 27 May 2012 14:55 UTC
McDonald's Chicken
© Natural Society
After shareholders proposed altering the McDonald's menu to help cut down on climbing obesity rates, particularly childhood obesity rates, it was quickly rejected by both the corporate board and retiring Chief Executive Jim Skinner. Instead of adopting the policy, which was actually drafted in an attempt to enhance worker productivity and overall quality of life, the former CEO instead stated that he was 'proud' of McDonald's menu changes. The quote was matched by the incoming CEO Don Thompson, who stated that the food options were very 'responsible'.

If you are even slightly familiar with the ingredients present in foods on the McDonald's menu (yes, even 'healthy' salads), then it is obvious to you why these statements are outwardly fictitious. In fact, you need only to examine what exactly makes up a 'chicken nugget' at McDonald's.

You would imagine that a chicken nugget would contain the base ingredients of bread, chicken, and some seasoning. In reality, however, the 'chicken nugget' contains toxic substances that have contributed to its reputation as one of the worst food items on the planet.

The 'meat' of a McNugget is actually compromised of 7 different ingredients, many of which have their own sub-ingredients. Real chicken is not even the main ingredient in this 'flesh formula', but hazardous and genetically modified ingredients. Sodium phosphate, safflower oil, wheat starch, dextrose, and a particularly dangerous substance known as autolyzed yeast extract all go into making the 'meat'. It is interesting to note that autolyzed yeast extract is similar to MSG, or monosodium glutamate.
Read More...
Attention

'The Demise of Guys': How video games and porn are ruining a generation

Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo and Nikita Duncan
CNN Health
Sun, 27 May 2012 02:16 UTC
video games
Is the overuse of video games and pervasiveness of online porn causing the demise of guys?

Increasingly, researchers say yes, as young men become hooked on arousal, sacrificing their schoolwork and relationships in the pursuit of getting a tech-based buzz.

Every compulsive gambler, alcoholic or drug addict will tell you that they want increasingly more of a game or drink or drug in order to get the same quality of buzz.

Video game and porn addictions are different. They are "arousal addictions," where the attraction is in the novelty, the variety or the surprise factor of the content. Sameness is soon habituated; newness heightens excitement. In traditional drug arousal, conversely, addicts want more of the same cocaine or heroin or favorite food.

The consequences could be dramatic: The excessive use of video games and online porn in pursuit of the next thing is creating a generation of risk-averse guys who are unable (and unwilling) to navigate the complexities and risks inherent to real-life relationships, school and employment.
Read More...
Attention

Restless Leg Syndrome, an Autoimmune Disease Linked to Gluten Sensitivity

Dr. Peter Osborne
Gluten Free Society
Thu, 17 May 2012 00:00 UTC
Image
Bad Bacteria = Restless Legs

Restless leg syndrome is a serious medical condition. It is thought to be an autoimmune disease affecting the nerves in the legs. This condition is characterized by feeling of restlessness in the legs. It can also manifest as numbness and tingling, and shooting nerve pains in the legs making it extremely difficult to sleep at night. The condition is commonly associated with patients who also suffer with depression. A recent study published in the journal Sleep Medicine investigated whether or not patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and bacterial overgrowth developed RLS.

CONCLUSIONS:
IBS and SIBO are common in RLS. Three hypotheses developed are (a) RLS patients are selectively immunocompromised or genetically predisposed and thus more subject to SIBO; (b) SIBO leads to autoimmune changes, and subsequent auto-antibodies attack brain and/or peripheral nerves and (c) SIBO inflammation leads to increased hepcidin and CNS iron deficiency which, in turn, leads to RLS. These hypotheses bear further investigation.
Read More...